After posting the article about the Massy Rebranding I had no idea how many people it would reach and what sort of reaction it would cause. My previously highest read blog post has a tally of 113 views; needless to say the article on Massy got a bit more. I didn't (don't) know how to feel about the reaction the article garnered for several reasons. On the outset I was pleased that people were reacting to the rebranding of a company, and the graphic designer in me was happy that others seemed passionate about a subject that I am most passionate about; however my cynical side was quick to think that people just love a scandal, and this was the cause of the article being shared. The majority of shares on Facebook only made reference to the "stealing/plagiarism" of the logo, something I made clear in my article that I didn't think was the case. I still stand by my opinion that it was a coincidence, and it is unfortunate that people are using my blog to try to prove plagiarism, of course there is no way to prove for sure so I can only give my opinion. The inclusion of the museum logo was to back up my original statement that the concept of the Massy logo could have been pushed further.
The article in the Express that used my blog as reference chose to include the fact that I said that both logos have similar fonts, however they failed to acknowledge the fact that the typeface is Helvetica which is one of the most (over)used typefaces in the world so that has no bearing on anything in my opinion, and once again I made reference to the Helvetica typeface to support my earlier claims of the logo.
To conclude I want to show you an article a good friend of mine sent me this morning showing another example of two logos looking very similar, you can find the article here. The logos are for airbnb, an online company that rents out lodgings, and Automation Anywhere, an IT company focused on automation. The similarities in this story, and the Massy story are extremely close and I urge you to check out the article to see that these types of coincidences happen in design and unfortunately, sometimes it can only be discovered after being seen by the public.
Thanks for reading and sharing.